


Tony and Natasha Make a Timeline

by boredealis



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Fix-It of Sorts, Natasha Romanov & Tony Stark Friendship, No character bashing, They Are All Stupid, Time Travel, Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-10-04
Packaged: 2020-10-06 02:58:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20499752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boredealis/pseuds/boredealis
Summary: Tony Stark closes his eyes on the battlefield in 2023. He wakes up in 2010, with Ho Yinsen's hands in his chest. With all of his memories of things yet to come, he decides he's going to (a) fix this universe and (b) get back to his own.Natasha Romanov closes her eyes on Vormir. She wakes up in SHIELD's barracks in 2010, with Clint Barton telling her that Tony Stark has been kidnapped by the Ten Rings. She decides she's going to (a) help Tony fix this universe and (b) make sure he doesn't die trying.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Avengers: Endgame Spoilers. In case anyone still needs that warning. 
> 
> Not really a fix-it fic. They sort of end up messing everything up more. But that's half the fun, right, guys?

Tony Stark died on a battlefield in 2023, with Pepper, Rhodey, and Peter by his side. His right side was burned to ash, he could barely see, he could barely think. The Stones had torn through his head, consuming everything they could, and left little behind. Yet, for the first time in years, he felt completely and utterly at peace. Morgan would go to sleep in a world free from Thanos. She would look to the stars and see hope and opportunity, not terror and destruction. There was still blood on his hands, and there always would be. But some of the debt was, hopefully, repaid. He’d left the universe better than how he found it. 

“You can rest now,” Pepper said, sounding far away. 

She was so kind. Beautiful. Smart. This was the first time in a long, long time, that she had been dead wrong.

Tony opened his eyes again to darkness, blurred figures above him, and burning, tearing pain. His chest was torn open, his flesh shredded. His heart pounded up into his throat as though it could somehow leap out of his body. He threw himself at the hands, the ropes, whatever it was that held him down. He was no stranger to pain, no, absolutely not, pain was a constant in the life of a superhero, but this was…this was…

Some part of his brain whispered, _it’s okay. They’re going to knock you out. Remember?_

_It’s not okay._

A cloth, stinking of dirt and blood and chemicals, covered his mouth and nose. He panted in the fumes because he couldn’t do anything else but. This was waiting for Obie to fire that final shot and finish him off. This was watching Pepper fall hundreds of feet into flame. This was being crushed under Captain America’s weight, watching the shield come down. This was staring at Thanos as he raised the Gauntlet, readying to turn Tony into a smear of red on the surface of Titan. This was a helplessness he’d learned well, an absence of choice.

_It’s not okay._

* * *

The first thing Tony saw was a cave ceiling. There was a tube taped into his nostril, tickling the back of his throat. This felt familiar. Well, of course it did. It was a trip down memory lane slash Groundhog Day, apparently. He ripped out the nasogastric tube, gagging, and tossed it aside. He’d had enough of hospitals and feeding tubes, thank you very much.

“Is this Hell?” he asked, to the room at large.

Yinsen chuckled, calm as a cucumber, as he shaved. “In a manner of speaking.”

Tony put his head back on the filthy pillow. Okay, fuck this. Fuck his life. Fuck everything. Everything in his life was so fucking stupid. He couldn’t even die without having to deal with this bullshit again? Why did he have to give everything, over and over, for this world, just to lose what he had sacrificed for? His breaths were getting shorter and shorter, little dry puffs of air, and he forced himself to breathe deeper, despite the pain in his chest. He had to calm down. Think logically. It was all he had.

Tony didn’t believe in the afterlife. And yeah, he did just travel through time and fight aliens for mystical, glowing jewelry, but that was different than the actual, Biblical Heaven and Hell. Right? Well, maybe not. Be it as it may, given the heist he and his team had just blundered their way through, time travel bullshit seemed much more likely. He blinked to clear his vision, which was swimming dangerously.

If this was time travel bullshit, he could go home again. Go back to…to Morgan. If this was Hell?

Well, if this was Hell, he was fucked anyway. No need to contemplate the possibility.

“Nothing else to say?” Yinsen prompted him.

Tony turned his head to look at Yinsen. Yinsen had turned away from the mirror to face Tony, that purposefully bland smile on his face. There was a lump in Tony’s throat. His eyes were wet, and hot. He’d forgotten what Yinsen looked like. God, he’d forgotten Yinsen, who’d sacrificed his life so Tony could live on. How could he have forgotten? How could Tony’s life have become so huge, so complicated and mystical, that he could forget the person who laid down on the wire for Tony? 

Yinsen needed to know everything. Not the huge, nuke-flying, gauntlet-wielding stuff. No, he wanted Yinsen to know about how he kissed Pepper at the wedding (and how it felt like the first time, every time). Waking up every morning next to Pepper. Holding his daughter for the first time. Alpacas, juice pops, and _I love you 3000_.

But this Yinsen didn’t know him. Not really.

And Morgan was gone.

Yinsen was suddenly standing closer, a hand on Tony’s shoulder. “Everything is alright,” he murmured, still calm. “You’re alive.”

Why was Yinsen saying that? This hadn’t happened the first time. Tony’s head swam, and he brought a hand up to his cheek. Oh. It was wet. _Oh. _He was crying. It almost never happened to him—he’d prided himself on being in control of his emotions ever since he learned, as a child, how they would be used against him—but once he realized he was crying, he couldn’t stop. His chest heaved, up and down, absolutely agonizing. He couldn’t get enough air, and the air he did take in escaped him through pathetic sobs. Wow. How the mighty have fallen.

Tony spent what felt like forever trying to get himself under control. A couple of times, it seemed like he’d managed, but then another sharp breath caught in his throat and it was right back to sobbing. Finally, his breathing evened out, and he wiped his eyes with his shirt sleeves. Yinsen had long since backed off, maybe sensing that Tony would prefer to be a sad sack by himself, and was stirring a pot of beans by the fire.

“There is shrapnel in your chest,” Yinsen said. Tony looked at him, unable to muster up an appropriate reaction. After all, he knew this story. This time, perhaps because of how pathetic Tony was at this moment, Yinsen’s voice had lost some of its forced lightness. “I removed all I could, but there is a lot there. It’s headed into your atrial septum. I inserted—”

“An electromagnet, that’s hooked up to a car battery. It keeps the shrapnel away from my heart,” Tony interrupted, voice dull. He stared into the pot of beans, and wondered if he could convince Yinsen to take them off the heat now. He always overcooked them.

Yinsen’s eyes widened. “I—yes, that’s right.”

“You saved my life.”

Yinsen pursed his lips, glanced at the camera above their heads. “For now.”

“You're Ho Yinsen. We met once,” Tony said. At the New Year’s Eve party, Switzerland. He’d been pretty drunk and enamored with Maya Hansen at the time, but, after racking his brain, he’d remembered. He also met that dickwad Killian there. Big night, apparently.

“You remember.” Yinsen sounded almost impressed, though he had an odd smile on his face. “You were quite drunk, at the time.”

“Yeah,” Tony sighed. “I get that a lot.”

Right on cue, the mail slot-cum-peephole opened up, accompanied by angry shouting in Arabic. Yinsen grabbed his arm, yanking him up. “Come on, stand up, stand up!” Tony got his feet under him, staring at the door. What was the plan? Would they ask him for the Jericho, again, if everything else seemed to be the same? Should he accept, refuse, would be more realistic to refuse, was it worth getting his head shoved under that disgusting water again?

“Put your hands up,” Yinsen hissed.

Bakaar strolled in with his guards, cocky as ever. Yinsen was still whispering instructions in Tony’s ear, but Tony only had eyes for the men in front of him. He’d faced down fucking Thanos, this was nothing. But it wasn’t nothing, it couldn’t be, because these were the people that had taught him how to fear. He’d been running ever since.

“Welcome, Tony Stark, the most famous mass murderer in the history of America,” Bakaar boomed in Arabic.

Yinsen kept translating. Of course, the Ten Rings wanted the stupid, stone-age Jericho missile. Tony held Bakaar’s gaze, biting his tongue on the threats and insults he wanted to spill out. He didn’t want to be tortured again, just like every other semi-rational human being. But he knew there was only one answer he could give that any of them would believe.

“I refuse.”

Predictably, he was manhandled to the bucket of cold, filthy water.

“Jericho.”

Tony barely resisted rolling his eyes. He had so many idiots in his life. “Yeah, no.”

Then, he was underwater.

Once, Tony and Natasha had talked about this. She was one of very few people who was privy to the details of what had happened in Afghanistan. He was uncomfortable with her knowing, at first, but over time, he learned things about her as well. Natasha knew what it was like, and offered no pity, only understanding.

_"It could happen again,” he’d said._

_She had nodded, because it was a fact of the life that they led. Some people, bad people, had questions. People like Tony and Natasha had answers. _

_“What do I do when it does?”_

_Cool green eyes had met his. “Don’t think. Not at all. Breathe when you can. Just keep breathing. That’s all you can really do.”_

The hands pulled him back up, and Tony breathed. He did that again. And again. And again.

* * *

“That was…very stupid,” Yinsen said, when Tony was returned to world's worst cave-themed hotel room, soaked and furious. Despite the scolding words, Yinsen was smiling. 

Tony smiled back because, this time around, Yinsen would live. 

* * *

The arc reactor, complete with its deadly palladium, glowed away in Tony’s chest. Tony tried to keep the light out of his peripheral vision, since it had the tendency to cause him to panic over his current shitty circumstances.

“Got a family?” he asked Yinsen, already knowing the answer.

“Yes, and I will see them when I leave here,” Yinsen said, looking down at the dice. Not so much a lie as a misdirection. “And you, Stark?”

“Yes,” Tony said, without thinking.

Yinsen’s smile became a bit broader. His glasses, glinting in the light, obscured his eyes.

“My…girlfriend.” Then, it was Tony’s turned to look down. “And daughter.”

Tony knew, logically, that if he succeeded in escaping the Ten Rings, he would probably see Pepper again. Morgan, though? Maybe, maybe not. He had said so little to her, really, in that message he left. He should have said more.

“You miss them.”

“Yeah.” Tony almost choked on the words. “They—they’re everything.”

“You will see them again.”

Tony studied the firm line of Yinsen’s lips, the set of his jaw.

“I know,” Tony lied, and left it at that.

* * *

For all the foresight that Tony had, for all of the advances in speed that he attempted to code into the Mark I, it wasn’t enough. It turns out, all the foresight in the world cannot save the life of someone who is set out to die.

Yinsen stared up at Tony, breath bubbling through blood. “Don’t waste your life…”

“I won’t."

He didn't have long to linger. Gunfire surrounded him. He put down the faceplate and walked away from Yinsen, for the second time, ready to bathe the desert in fire. 

* * *

The ocean spread out beneath the plane, deep blue and deceptively calm. Tony was fully aware that Rhodey, ever the mother bird, was watching him. Hell, he could feel Rhodey’s needy “talk to me” vibes from all the way across the plane. But he couldn’t talk to Rhodey, not about this. Not unless he wanted to be locked in the looney bin for the next thirty years.

Obie. Bruce, on the run. Cap, still in the ice. The Tesseract. Loki. Killian. HYDRA. Ultron. _Thanos. _

The responsibility was so heavy on his shoulders, it was hard to breathe. It could also be the enormous chunk of metal in his chest. But the responsibility was, indeed, foremost.

_Baby steps, Stark. Baby steps_.

He had to deal with present problems. The rest could wait…not forever, but a little while. Obadiah, the snake, was still alive. He had ordered Tony murdered by terrorists and, in a few minutes, he would pretend to be thrilled that Tony survived. He was selling weapons on the side, like all of them didn’t have enough money already. In the days and weeks to come, he would be conspiring with the Ten Rings and attempting to assemble his very own Iron Man suit.

Tony had been a lone gunslinger for years but, knowing what he knew now…He couldn’t do this alone. No one person could do this alone.

He couldn’t trust Rhodey with the information. As much as it hurt to think about, Rhodey was loyal to the Air Force. He and Tony were friends, best buddies, pals, no doubt about that, but Rhodey was currently under the impression that Tony was traumatized from his traumatizing trip to Traumafghanistan. Out of concern for Tony (and, just maybe, the American populace), Rhodey could inadvertently share information with the wrong person. With the entire US government saturated by HYDRA, there were many wrong people that Rhodey could share with. Tony had no doubt that Obie had plenty of fingers in HYDRA’s pies.

He knew he could trust Pepper. She’d come through for him, again and again, and she’d come through last time. But could he do that to her again? He’d been selfish for so long, taking and taking from her without giving much back. Putting her in mortal danger over and over again.

Could he live with knowing that he made Pepper Potts a target _again? _

That left SHIELD. SHIELD with the Nazis, SHIELD. HYDRA SHIELD. SHYDRA? Shit, he was getting a headache already. Couldn’t he have gotten zapped into his eighteen-year-old body? He didn’t have headaches or joint pain then. Hangovers, sure, but those were headaches by choice. 

He blinked out the window, watching the ground approach faster and faster. Ah. They were landing in Malibu. Well, that was a good five minutes of thinking, great job, excellent job.

Rhodey took his arm as the ramp lowered. “Tony.”

“Yes, dear?”

“You need to go to the hospital.”

“Hospitals are for posers, squares, and losers.”

“Oh, so you’ll fit right in.”

Tony ignored the quip, feeling very old and tired. He looked Rhodey in the eye. “I want to go _home_, Rhodey.”

Rhodey frowned, but nodded, reluctant. “If you start to feel…weird…”

“I always feel weird, it’s part of my charm.” Tony led the way down the ramp. Things were fucked up, really fucked up, and there were aliens and gods and wizards and whatever that nobody seemed to know about yet. He didn't want to think about it, for a while, and he didn’t lie to Rhodey. He wanted to see Pepper and Happy. He wanted a hint of normalcy in this godforsaken excuse for an afterlife.

Unfortunately, it seemed as though normalcy was out the window.

Because there, standing next to Pepper and Happy, arms crossed and hip cocked, was Natasha Romanoff.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Let’s see what Natasha’s been up to while Tony’s been in Afghanistan. Since her chapter ended up being longer than I expected, I’ve split it up into two parts.
> 
> Some of the interactions and plot points are pulled in part from Iron Man: Security Measures, which is a comic showing SHIELD’s point of view during the events of Iron Man 1.

In the back of Natasha’s mouth, there was a false tooth. In the days of the Red Room, it was a tooth-shaped capsule, full of potassium cyanide. She had been told that she was to die rather than betray the secrets of the KGB. She was told that it would be an honor to die for her country, to prevent the decay in the West from spreading to the Soviet Union. She’d been told this, over and over again, but never quite believed in it. Obedience, after all, was much different than loyalty.

When she was captured by Clint Barton, he yanked it out of her mouth first thing. When he convinced her to join SHIELD, it was replaced with a dental implant. Over time, SHIELD asked her to do many things, some things that ordinary agents would balk at, but they never asked her to die for them. 

In the end, the people she ended up dying for didn’t ask. They couldn’t, even. They were dust in the wind. She did it, regardless, because she knew that some things were worth dying for.

“Let me go.”

“Please, no,” Clint said, tears in his eyes.

“It’s okay,” she whispered, because it was.

She jumped. In the last seconds of her life, she seemed weightless. Not just because of the wind rushing around her, but because she knew that the red in her ledger had finally been wiped out. This mission was perilous, ludicrous even. There were so many things that could go wrong. But, she knew the Avengers. She knew that, come hell or high water, the dusted would return, and her debt would be repaid. 

She hit the ground. There was a second of blinding pain, and then, nothing.

* * *

_Everything was red. The light should have been blinding, but it wasn’t. It was just…there. Natasha took a step forward, head on a swivel. Her footstep disturbed the red water below her, but the water made no sound._

_There, standing at the stone archway, was a green woman. An alien? _

_The woman turned, and the two watched each other in tense silence. The green woman held herself like a warrior and, for a few moments, seemed ready to fight. The last thing Natasha wanted to do was fight—she’d had enough of that on Earth. Then, all at once, the woman relaxed, softening her face and posture._

_“You too, then,” the woman said._

_“What?” _

_“You were sacrificed for the Soul Stone.”_

_After Carol had brought Tony and Nebula to Earth, and Tony finished verbally tearing Steve to bloody shreds, Nebula explained what had happened on Titan. With her voice even more raspy due to exhaustion, she had said, _“Thanos left and went to Vormir with Gamora, my sister. He came back to Titan with the Soul Stone. She didn’t.”

_Natasha hazarded a guess. “You’re Gamora.”_

_Gamora nodded. _

_“What is this place?”_

_“The Soul World. When you die in exchange for the Soul Stone…this is where you end up."_

_“Oh.” Natasha looked around at the orange sky and bloody water. “Forever?”_

_Instead of answering, Gamora cocked her head to the side like she was listening to something quiet, or far away. Natasha cocked her head too, but heard nothing but dead silence. After a few moments of this, Gamora laughed. “Not for you, I guess,” she said, a tad bitterly. _

_“What do you mean?”_

_“Can’t you hear them?"_

_“Hear who?” _

_“They have plans for you.”_

_Natasha usually didn’t get frustrated easily. This time, she gave herself some slack, since she’d just died, after all, and Gamora was being irritating and unnecessarily vague. “Just tell me what’s going on.”_

_“There’s no point in explaining. You won’t remember it anyway.”_

_Natasha opened her mouth to say more, but paused when she saw something _moving _behind her, in the reflection of Gamora’s eyes. A poisonous green light, growing brighter and brighter. Tensing her body, willing herself to be strong and remember what she’d died for, what brought her here, she turned around and—_

* * *

“Nat,” a voice said, from somewhere above her.

Natasha opened her eyes. She’d…dreamed, something. Something important. She tried to hold onto the details, but they slipped out of her mind easily as they had come. The brief panic of forgetting dissipated, and she focused on the person standing above her.

“Clint?” she asked. It was like her mind was stuck in the mud. 

“The one and only.”

She frowned, sitting up. She took in the familiar metal walls, the uncomfortable cot beneath her. “It didn’t work?”

“What didn’t work?”

“I thought…” She had a headache, already. She pinched the bridge of her nose, willing away the pain. “I thought that after I jumped, you’d get the stone.”

Clint stared at her. She looked straight at him for the first time, and noticed what she hadn’t before. He was younger, his hair was shorter, and he was wearing a SHIELD standard uniform—not Stark tech. This was the Clint Barton she knew from years ago, before everything went to hell. Something was wrong here. She didn’t know what had happened, and she had to find out. In the meantime, fitting in was the best option.

“I…sorry. I had a dream. Got confused.”

Clint huffed. “Must have been one hell of a dream.”

“Yeah. Yeah, it was.” Now that Natasha was focused, she saw that she was in SHIELD’s Washington, DC barracks, which had been abandoned in 2011 in favor of the Helicarrier. Her body was youthful, muscles and joints more limber than she remembered, and her hair fell in bright red ringlets around her face.

Did the Soul Stone send her back in time? Was that even possible?

“Nat. _Nat._”

She looked back at Clint. He had the irritated look of someone who’d repeated themselves several times already. “Yes?"

The irritation instantly melted away into concern. “Are you okay?”

“Fine.”

Clint looked incredulous, but apparently decided to move on. “You know Tony Stark?" 

Oh. _Oh. _She remembered this.

“The weapons designer? I know of him,” she said, as she had the first time.

“This morning, he went to demonstrate some sort of new missile in Afghanistan. His convoy was attacked and blown up while they were driving through Kunar. Most of them are dead, Stark is gone.”

She blinked. After living in a world where Tony Stark was Iron Man, superhero, for almost fifteen years, perceiving him as a vulnerable civilian was more difficult than she expected. Her first instinct was to ask what was taking Tony so long to blow them up. Instead, calling back to the last time she had this conversation with Clint, she said, “And what are we supposed to do about it?”

Clint shrugged. He picked up his bow from where he’d leaned it against the door, shrugging it over his shoulder. “That’s what we’re going to Fury to find out.”

* * *

Fury’s DC office was the same as it always was—dark, dreary, and covered in leather. So was Fury. He stood next to the window, staring out at the traffic in the city below. Coulson was sitting in one of Fury’s office chairs, paging through a file that Natasha knew was a dossier on the Ten Rings. Natasha kept her face composed, concealing the shock of seeing Coulson and Fury again for the first time in _years._A silly, childish part of her wanted to hug them. She swiftly crushed it down.

“You know the situation,” Fury said, not turning away from the window.

“Stark,” Clint said, grim.

“Nobody has claimed responsibility, but the Ten Rings have been active in the area,” Fury said.

“Do we know if he’s alive?” Clint asked.

Coulson flipped a page, calm and unflappable as ever. “There was some blood at the scene. Not enough to indicate a fatal wound.”

“Stark’s alive,” Natasha said, wanting to get to the point as quickly as possible. At this very moment, Tony was being tortured and maimed by the Ten Rings. She kept her face clear and neutral, but her insides curdled. Tony was her friend. She babysat his daughter, for God’s sake. It was different this time around.

_But it’s not the same man_. _It’s the man he was before Iron Man, _the cooler, logical part of her brain pointed out.

“How are you so certain he’s alive?” Coulson’s tone was deceptively mild, but Natasha could tell he was suspicious. He could probably see how hard she was schooling her face. Goddammit, he knew her too well, and she was too out of practice in hiding her emotions. After Coulson died and Natasha became an Avenger and, later, the Director of SHIELD, it had been less than necessary.

“If he were dead, they would have asked for a ransom. Tried to get something from Stark Industries.” She looked at the screen on the wall beside her, which showed the aftermath of the attack on the convoy. Wreckage, bodies, body parts_. _“But they’ve been quiet. They think they can get something from him that’s better than money.”

“Weapons,” Clint said, with his usual flair of stating the obvious. “You think he’ll give in?”

“Stark’s no soldier. He wakes up to models, mimosas, and massages, not torture. They could turn him.” Fury turned around, his one good eye narrowed. “With what he knows about our national security…" 

“It could be disastrous,” Coulson finished. He sat up straight, closing his dossier. “We can be in Afghanistan by sunrise, Director Fury.”

“You can, but you won’t,” Fury said, holding up a hand. “We’re the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division. Note the word ‘homeland.’ We’re not currently authorized for foreign ops.”

Coulson frowned. “Sir…If the Ten Rings manages to turn Stark, it is most definitely a threat to the homeland.”

The last time this happened, Natasha had been having similar thoughts. Stark was a civilian, a playboy, who had never known struggle for his entire life, and he would turn against America if he thought he was in danger. She knew better now. However, there was little she could say to convince them of Stark’s character, not without revealing her inexplicable personal investment. Instead of speaking, she looked at the ground.

“Coulson, Barton…go to Malibu, talk to Stark’s partner, Stane. Find out if Stark is the kind of man who’d sell out his country to save his skin. Romanoff, standby. Be ready to assist a recovery op if Rhodes and his men find anything.” Natasha nodded in acknowledgement. “Dismissed.” 

* * *

Once dismissed, Natasha returned to her room in SHIELD’s barracks. Looking around at the bare walls, the room absent of any kind of decoration or personal touch, she realized just how disconnected she was from the world before the Avengers. Her family. She doesn’t know where she is—whether this is a dream, an afterlife, or a second chance to fix what had been broken—but she knew, no matter what it was, she had to protect her family. With that in mind, she took stock.

It was January 24, 2010. Clint, Laura, Cooper, and Lila were safe, for now. Tony was being held captive by the Ten Rings, somewhere in Afghanistan. If this world was the same as the one she came from, he would be building the arc reactor and the Mark I over the next two months, and would escape from captivity in late April. Bruce was on the run from Ross’s men and may or may not be in South America. Steve was still frozen in ice, somewhere deep in the Arctic, and Thor was still on Asgard.

Thanos was not a present threat. The Tesseract was in SHIELD’s vaults, the Time Stone was in the sanctum, and the rest of the stones were scattered all across the galaxy. Thanos would not make a serious attempt to collect them until 2018, if her math was right.

She dug around in her pocket, hoping to dispel some of her restless energy, and pulled out one of her pocket knives. She recognized it as one that she’d lost during the battle with the Chitauri. She tapped it gently against her thumbnail to test its sharpness, pulling it out when it stuck.

Was she here to save this universe from the tragedies that had befallen her own? Or was this a mistake, and she should be attempting to return home?

This almost appeared to be a random, magic-related mistake. She’d simply woken up, in bed, and was informed of the details of what seemed, at the time, to be a routine rescue or recovery mission. However, the devil was in the details. It didn’t seem like a coincidence that she woke up on the day that Tony, one of her fellow Avengers, was kidnapped in Afghanistan. It suggested that someone, or something, had sent her here with a mission, and Tony was part of it. Was she supposed to save him?

Every choice from here on out would have consequences. If she managed to save Tony before his escape with the Iron Man suit, would Iron Man ever exist at all?

_Choices, choices._

It didn’t help that the walls, floors, and ceiling had eyes. HYDRA had thoroughly infiltrated every part of the US government, including SHIELD. The list of people she could trust—Clint, Fury, perhaps Coulson—was short, and her first instinct was to hide this from them, as well, at least until she knew what was going on. Her best bet for that might be Stephen Strange, the Sorcerer Supreme. She couldn’t contact him without the possibility of the communication being intercepted, and could not go to New York to visit the Sanctum without creating suspicion. The next best person to ask would be the inventor of time travel himself…Tony. Since she was privy to the investigation, an attempt to locate him would not only be acceptable, but expected.

(_Maybe all of it was her attempt to rationalize the fact that she felt drawn to Tony, in a way she never had before. Some part of her knew, deep down, that finding him was the key._)

This time around, she would save Tony Stark. After that, he’d really owe her—she couldn’t wait to hold it over his head for the rest of his long, very, very long, life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I loved all of your nice comments last chapter. Let me know what you guys think of this one! What do you think Natasha's going to do to get Tony out?


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, everyone. I'm a liar. Nat's been busy busy busy, a busy bee, so this is her second chapter out of three. Mmm, she's definitely gonna have a real easy time of it during her third chapter. No doubt about it, no sir. It's not a convoluted wreck of a plan at all!
> 
> As always, I love to hear your thoughts and comments. Tell me what you want to see! I love to please (and also cause pain, but I know some of you guys like that too).

One problem with saving Tony. Natasha had to find him first.

She squinted at the greyed-out bullseye in front of her, aiming. The earmuffs were tight over her skull, grounding, and her hair was pulled into a brutally tight bun. She’d done similar practice in the weeks leading up to the Time Heist, trying to prepare for any possibility, any fight she would face. When it seemed she and her team held the beating heart of the universe in her fingertips, when they’d worked out a plan that seemed it could so easily break down, returning to the shooting range was what kept her feet on ground. The steel in her hand, controlling the recoil when the gun fired, the smell of gunpowder. It did nothing in the end, except reassure her that she knew how to kill. It wouldn’t have worked against Thanos…

She squeezed her eyes shut, slid her finger off the trigger. The gun locked the trigger with a low vibration. God, _Thanos. _Every time she thought of him, her stomach swooped down to the ground. It wasn’t fear of the Titan. She had met men like him, who thought they knew better than all others, who took any power they could get and twisted it to meet their needs. She had never once wanted to give a man like him the dignity of her fear. 

There was a different cause of her sickness. It was worry. Anxiety. Did the Avengers win? They did, of course they did, there’s no way they couldn’t have, but was she the only one they had to sacrifice? Was Clint telling his family he loved them, as she’d demanded he do? Was Steve greeting Bucky, his long-lost friend, lost and found again? Was Tony introducing Peter Parker to Morgan right now? Was Bruce…did Bruce miss her?

Maybe, it was all gone. Everything that had happened, the years they’d lived through, wiped clean off the slate. All they’d done, everything they’d fought for, bled for, died for, was a dream. Or, even worse, it was a loop. Perhaps her due in life was to find a family, watch them be torn apart, watch them lose vital parts of themselves, find a spark of hope, die to keep that hope alive—and then come back, and do it over, and over, and over again.

It was as her Red Room handler had told a roomful of chubby-cheeked little girls that would, over time, become only one. There were no happy endings in this world. Only dishonest beginnings.

No. No need to think about that. She shook her head, readjusted her goggles. She picked up her gun, placed her finger on the trigger. The gun vibrated twice to confirm her fingerprints had been registered and the trigger was unlocked. Buzz buzz—same tempo and feel as an iPhone. Tony had broken a coffee stirrer in half when Steve asked him if Apple made all of the SHIELD-issue weapons, or just the handguns. God, and people thought Steve was clueless.

Okay. Right now, she had to work off the assumption that this was something that she could break away from. She would be returning to her family, they’d be celebrating the fact that things were back the way they supposed to. So the goal was Tony. Rescue Tony from the terrorists. Force-feed him coffee and energy drinks until he invented time travel and the time-space GPS. Then, she’d go home. She couldn’t think of anything else, not right now. There was time to worry and bellyache later. And hell, if this was inescapable? She had nothing but time.

She squeezed the trigger, hitting the bullseye straight on. It was smooth, little recoil. She’d almost forgotten how good StarkTech had felt, back when Tony was still producing weapons. it was no mistake that SHIELD outfitted all of their agents with it, despite Fury’s almost legendary (and entirely facetious) disdain for Tony.

SHIELD had its satellites scanning the Kunar province 24/7, looking for signs of Tony or the Ten Rings. In her…past life, when Tony had escaped the Ten Rings by blowing them sky high, Fury had to have been informed of the exact location of the explosion and, therefore, the location of Tony’s prison. She had not been privy to it. She knew that Coulson and Fury had been suspicious of ridiculously Tony’s flimsy cover story (_“accidental ammo dump explosion,” Tony, really?_) and believed him to be brainwashed. If that suspicion reached Tony, and Tony _had_been brainwashed…well, it wouldn’t have been good. Coulson and Fury had closed ranks around the investigation, disclosing information about Tony and Iron Man only on a “need-to-know” basis. She hadn’t needed to know where Tony had escaped from.

Her previous lack of information about and interest in Tony’s escape, of course, complicated things now. The explosion in Kunar had not happened yet, and neither Coulson nor Fury knew where Tony was. She couldn’t just go out and search every single cave in the Kunar Province, especially since Fury was so wary of sending SHIELD agents to operations outside of the US.

She bit her lip, staring down the target. Outside, the sun had gone down, darkness dropping down. God, this was a day. One day. It seemed almost like forever. 

There was one person that knew where Tony was. Or, if he didn’t now, he could find out. The man who had put the target on Tony’s back.

Obadiah Stane. 

* * *

_Tony and Pepper, after Morgan was born, were strange. Not even in the hippie wholesome kind of strange, owning an alpaca and eating goji berries and doing yoga, though they did do all those things. No, they were just…different from what Natasha would have expected of them._

_Morgan was a loud baby. Tony loved to tell people that she started screaming straight out of the womb, and hadn’t stopped screaming since. He seemed to think this was some sort of point of pride. Maybe Thor, if he’d been there, and sober, would have proclaimed her to have the “lungs of a warrior.” Of course, he was neither of those things, so Tony had to be proud of her screaming power all on his own. It could be irritating, but Natasha knew that babies could be loud. No, that wasn’t the strange part. It was how oddly zen Pepper and Tony seemed to be about it._

_Okay, maybe she would have expected it from Pepper. Pepper seemed to come out of anything and everything with her head held high and her hair set perfectly to rights, ready to keep fighting. God, she’d somehow managed to get Tony to do paperwork, _on time_. Buddha would probably congratulate her on her patience. The only time Natasha had really seen her crack was when the snap happened, and Tony was still lost somewhere in space. It was the uncertainty that got to Pepper, Natasha thought…Tony had been Schrödinger’s fiancé. Was he alive, or was he dust? Steve had asked her if she had any family she could be with, drowning in his own grief but still trying to keep others afloat. Pepper said, “He’s all I have,” and meant it wholehearted and completely. _

_Maybe after all that happened to Pepper these past few years, a baby crying wasn’t high up on a list of emergencies or even annoyances. _

_Uber-zen Tony, though? That was a surprise. Yes, Natasha had gotten to know him more over the past few years. She’d seen him change as a person, become a hero. She knew him, but she still thought that Tony would freak out over a crying baby. But he hadn’t, he didn’t, he wouldn’t. New information for Natasha to note down in her file, as though it was normal thing to keep mental files on all the people she knew and loved. Maybe he’d changed, at some point between boarding the ship to Titan and returning half-dead. Or Natasha was the one had changed. _

_In the months after Clint left, Natasha visited the lake house often. Pepper and Tony never said anything, never asked her why, but they may have suspected. They would never hesitate to set a place for her at the table—they always gave her the seat with the clearest view of the all the doors and windows. There were always clean sheets on the bed in the guest room, white, crisp, smelling a little of lemons. Tony introduced her to his alpaca, Gerald, who was ridiculously soft and made pleasant humming noises. One of the Canada geese living near the pond had goslings. When she watched them follow their mother in a line, they oddly reminded her of the Avengers, following Steve into battle. She didn’t dare say that to Tony, though. She didn’t have a death wish. _

_At times, the lake house was brutally familiar. There were echoes of a farmhouse from what seemed forever ago. It was quieter. There was more water. The similarities still stacked up and sometimes, she could swear she saw Clint, or Laura, or Cooper walking in the corner of her eye, and just out of reach. Despite the ghosts, just being there for a while, where it was mostly quiet and the responsibilities were minimal, was worth the pain, the memories, and guilt. _

_When Natasha’s phone would ring, all of the day and into the night, neither Pepper nor Tony mentioned it. They all had their things they were hiding from, here, the things that they couldn’t speak of. To question one would be to question all._

_It was late morning, the sun rising higher in the sky, when Natasha walked outside and found Tony staring out at the lake. She’d walked out to pursue the cooler air, sick and tired of the grogginess of summer. New York wasn’t the worst state for hot temperatures, but she’d grown up in an unheated Russian “orphanage” out in the mountains, so she’d never quite adapted to the heat. She sighed with relief at the crispness in the back of her throat which spoke of fall. Some of the trees surrounding the lake had already started to change color. The ash trees, leaders of the pack, dotted the landscape with bright yellow splotches. Tony stood at the rocky little shoreline of the lake, Morgan in his arms. She was unusually silent, her dark little eyes looking curiously out across the water. Little wisps of dirty blonde hair escaped out from under Morgan’s powder blue beanie. She was growing fast, getting bigger every day._

_“The water. It calms her down,” Tony said, an answer to a question Natasha didn’t ask. _

_“Ah.” Natasha went to stand next to him, careful not to bump him and accidentally jostle Morgan. It would be sacrilegious to interrupt such a quiet miracle. Tony flashed her a quick smile, a genuine one, and looked back to the water. They stood in silence for a few minutes, until Morgan, the little monster she was, started fussing._

_“Ohhh, niblet,” Tony murmured, bouncing her up and down. “I know, I know.”_

_She tried to crack a smile. It felt strange on her face, foreign. “What do you know, Tony?” she said, the slightly teasing tone feeling odd in her mouth. _

_“Life’s the hardest ever when you’re a baby. Mom doesn’t have enough milk, the sun’s bright, the sun’s not bright _enough_, it’s too hot and too cold, too loud and too quiet,” he said, in a tone that implied he was imparting the world’s greatest wisdom. _

_Morgan smeared some of her drool it around her cheek with a tiny balled up fist. Tony patiently wiped it off with his shirt sleeve, bouncing her a bit on his hip. Natasha’s eyes were drawn to the grey hair at his temples, slowly spreading throughout and turning his hair salt and pepper. He was greying, but at least the lines on his face didn’t seem as pronounced as they used to be. _

_It struck her, then. Tony Stark, a normal father doting on his daughter. The _great _Tony Stark. Iron Man. He’d flown a nuke into space, fought gods and aliens and titans. He’d slept with a new woman every night and tossed her out the next day. Alcohol, money, and drugs flowed in equal measure. But here, standing next to a little lake house with a baby in panda onesie, this was absolutely where he wanted to be. Maybe it had been all along—she just didn’t see it. Natasha absolutely knew that look gleaming in his eyes, she’d seen it before in others. He’d gotten what he’d always wanted, what he’d wished for so desperately that saying it aloud would have felt like giving up its power, and now, here he was. Waiting for the world to take it away from him. _

_Natasha had seen that look a few times in Clint’s eyes, especially in the months after Cooper was born. Slowly, over time, the fear had faded, and she’d been so glad to see it gone. So happy to see him happy. _

_Her vision was blurred. Why was—oh, god. Oh, _god.

_“Nat?” _

_God, this man. Would he ever stop being onto her bullshit? Would he ever stop poking his nose into what she didn’t want him to know? Natasha opened her mouth to say that, to be cruel, but what came out was, “I should have died.”_

_Natasha watched Tony stiffen a bit, in her peripheral vision, but he relaxed again almost instantly. “Yeah?” he said, rather blandly. He knew what she was talking about, of course. People talked about little else, these dust-darkened days. _

_“50%. One in two chance of death. And with all I’ve done, I get to live, and he…” She hauled back what she knew was building fury. It wouldn’t be good to agitate Morgan, she read somewhere that babies could sense those things. She picked out an ugly little tree whose roots were being eroded by the lake and focused on that. “Clint loses everything, just because of odds. Or bad luck. It’s so…stupid. Idiotic. It’s idiotic, that I’m here and he’s…” Every word was both forced and not forced. She was dragging the words up from the depths of her lungs, and the moment they reached her tongue, they escaped like gunshots. _

_“You’re not alone in believing that, I think.” Tony looked down at Morgan, who was passionately gumming his finger. “Taking ‘eat the rich’ a tad too literally there, princess.”_

_Natasha let out a small, hollow laugh and blinked to clear her eyes._

_“You know, the Ten Rings didn’t kill me, even though they could have.” Natasha looked up—not because of the non sequitur, that was just sort of Tony. No, it was that _he didn’t talk about Afghanistan_. It was an Avengers Official Unspoken Rule, along with giving Steve drinks without ice and turning off footage of Olympic sprinters when Wanda was around. “Well, really, they didn’t even have to kill me. They could have just let me bleed out in the desert, it wouldn’t have taken long.” Tony glanced down at his chest where the arc reactor once was. “When I got out, I thought I knew the reason why they let me live.”_

_Blinking wasn’t working, Natasha’s eyes were not clear. She covertly wiped her eyes on one sleeve. “The Jericho,” she said, slightly muffled by her sleeve. _

_“Well, yeah, that was part of it. The Jericho was good, nice missile, all of the things I made back then were nice in how not nice they were. But, hey, let’s go realistic, here. The Jericho wasn’t…amazing, life changing, world-ending. No, they would have finished the job, for the right price. They wouldn’t have traded a big bag of cash for another missile.” He blew out a little bit of air, rocking on the balls of his feet. “So, after Ob—Stane, dies, Pepper shows me this video she found on the ghost drive. Like, a reverse ransom video. I look awful, by the way, disgusting. I even don’t know what I was doing with that hair. Frick, I should have just cut it when Pepper said, I was definitely lying about that sensitive scalp stuff…shoot, what was I saying? Oh, right…the Ten Rings were all worked into a tizzy because they didn’t know they were sent to kill _me_. You know this one, right?”_

Everyone _knew this one. Even if Tony didn’t want them to. “Yes.” _

_“Well, they wanted more money to finish the job. But Stane didn’t pay it. So I’m thinking, what, a fit of sentiment? A little regret for taking out a hit on his dearly beloved godson? Found Jesus, Buddha, Odin? But no, that wasn’t right, not after he put on a huge murder suit and went after Pepper. So I dug a little deeper, and I found the stupidly simple truth. Stane hated Raza, thought he was a huge poopyhead, and didn’t feel like paying a couple million more. That’s it.”_

_“That’s…sloppy of him.”_

_“I’d guess he thought I’d tick them off enough that they’d just kill me for free. Which, yeah, fair enough. Anyway, when I learned about that, it felt…wrong. Because I thought that I’d gotten out because I was so smart and talented, they needed me. That there was a reason for it that had something entirely to do with my actions, something I had control and power of. But I really got out…sort of because Stane was feeling a little petty, there was one guy he didn’t like, and for whatever reason, he just didn’t feel like digging into his purse again.”_

_Morgan squirmed in Tony’s arms. He put his hand in her wispy hair and used his thumb to gently stroke one chubby cheek. “Why are you telling me this?” Natasha asked him. _

_“Well. Sometimes, dumb luck gives you your life back. For me, it was at the cost of someone else’s...And maybe, let’s say, you didn’t want it back. Maybe you wanted dumb luck to give it to somebody you think deserved it. But that’s not how it works.”_

_“Maybe it should be.”_

_“Yeah, maybe, maybe, but all I’m saying is, Nat, you have another chance. You got lucky, you stayed alive when a lot of people died. I know it doesn’t feel right, you think you owe somebody, somewhere. I won’t tell you that you have to feel deserving of it right now…Maybe you can’t. Maybe you aren’t even deserving. But you make up for it, every day, by using what you got through stupid, shitty circumstances. The dumb luck isn’t your choice, but everything you do after is.”_

_She had her phone, screen lit with hundreds of missed calls, burning a hole in her pocket. So many people needing help. So many people displaced. And when Clint left, she’d just fallen apart on them. She hated it, hated when her control slipped, because it was so hard to get it back once it was gone. “What if I can’t do it?” she asked him. _

_He shrugged, and winced when Morgan let out a wail. A small wail, but definitely a wail. “Well, if you can live with it, more power to you.” He laughed, and it was plastic. “Let me know when you figure it out. We’ll compare notes.” _

* * *

First things first. She called Clint, who picked up on the first ring. “What’s up, creepy crawly?”

She heard the smile in his voice. She couldn’t help the way her lips twitched up at the corners. “Are you on the jet?”

“To Malibu? Yeah. Jealous?”

“Oh, extremely. You know how I love to tan.” She took a sip of her coffee, grimacing at the taste. God, Dunkin Donuts, what was she thinking? At least she had secured a seat in the corner. Nobody to read her computer screen. “So, how are the apples growing?” _Can you talk freely?_

“Pretty good—need to watch out for that first frost, though.”_Yes, but not for long. _

She lowered her voice, looking around at her fellow Dunkin Donuts patrons. All of them were engrossed in their conversations or in their StarkPhones. It was almost a novelty, now, for people not to recognize her, even though she’d been quite anonymous for most of her life. “Fury has us looking through Stark Industries’ financials. I’m seeing a lot…discrepancies.”

“Wouldn’t be a surprise to find out that Stark is war profiteering.”

“You really think so?”

“What, are you defending his honor?”

Swallowing a couple of comments she might have made about that, reminding herself sharply that the Tony of this era was very different from the Tony she’d known the day she died, she said, “Stark’s the tech guy, the designer. He gives all of his business-related responsibilities to Potts, or Stane, so he can spend all his time on classic cars and robots. You think he cares about making a couple million here and there from selling guns to terrorists?”

“As long as he can keep his liver swimming in booze, I imagine not,” Clint conceded. After a brief pause, he said, “Since when do you know so much about Stark?”

“Oh, you know, since he got kidnapped by terrorists and started presenting a potential threat to the world as we know it.”

“Don’t guilt me cause I’m not a big nerd, with all your fancy book readin’ and stuffs.” Natasha scoffed, and Clint continued on. “So, you’re telling me Stark Industries has shit accountants. Why do you care?”

She paused, staring down her laptop screen. She wasn’t investigating Stark Industries Financials, as many SHIELD agents had actually been ordered to do. There was no need for her to look—she knew what she’d find there. Discrepancies and red flags, all related to lining the pockets of Obadiah Stane and the rest of his little cronies. Instead, she was digging into the financials of Stane’s various “charitable organizations”—organizations that were likely used to launder the money from under-the-table weapons sales. Stane paid the Ten Rings to kill Tony. If that transaction was here, if a charitable foundation made a payment to a shady off-shore account, she would find it.

“Clint, I have a feeling.”

“Wow.” Clint whistled. “That’s new.”

“Shut up. I have a feeling about Stane.”

“Stark’s yes-man?”

“If you want to call it that.”

“What kind of feeling about Stane?”

She had found her way to the Maria Stark Foundation’s website. And god, didn’t that name give her a huge stab in the chest? As far as she could tell, Stane had taken over most of its operations upon the Starks’ deaths, since Tony was seventeen and not interested in being charitable in any way. A huge photo of Stane, shaking the hand of some other ball-going rich person, was splashed on the greeting page of the website. Natasha stared down at Stane’s smiling face, with his unsmiling eyes. “I need you to do something for me. And you can’t ask me why. Or tell anyone else.” She resisted putting her face in her hands, needing to remain cool and collected. _Public place, public place, Natalia_. “Just…trust me.”

There was only a heartbeat of silence. And then, Clint said, voice unhesitating, “What do you need?”

She stared at the drops of coffee pooled into the lid of her coffee cup. If she could get back home, if she could fix things without needing to make any more uneven trades…Maybe her failure to extend the same unhesitating trust to him would be justified.

* * *

That evening, Natasha made her way down to the showers, claiming one of SHIELD’s little individual shower stalls. It was crappy compared to Stark Tower, but downright luxurious compared to the cold communal showers of her childhood. She turned the spray up to boiling, stood underneath it, and watched the steam rise up above her head.

She tried to keep her mind blank. But it wandered, as it was newly apt to do, to the moment that she’d kicked off from that ledge.

Self-sacrifice, she thought, was supposed to be easy. You die, and you’re done. Simple. No need to agonize, no need to contemplate why. She jumped yesterday, and fifteen years from now. She thought she’d be dead, not standing in a shower stall with a paper wrapped bar of soap and a mildewed shadow curtain.

She tipped her head down, the water pouring over her hair and trickling down.

Was what she felt…disappointment?

God, maybe she did need a shrink.

* * *

Natasha, honestly, was surprised that she opened her eyes again that morning. Some part of her thought that maybe she’d fallen asleep in the lab while planning different configurations of who would go on the Time Heist (worse than a floor plan for a wedding), or maybe dozed off while listening to one of Thor’s excruciating play-by-plays of the last Fortnite match he played. But no, she was looking at the ceiling of SHIELD’s Washington barracks. She sighed, and got up. She was running out of time to not have a mission. If she didn't act quickly, she could get sent to the opposite side of the planet of Kunar. 

When she went to brush her teeth, she discovered that the brand and flavor of toothpaste that she had used for the past twenty years tasted different, and not for the better. If she was in hell, these tiny details could well drive her insane.

Coulson and Clint were talking to Stane right now. She trusted Clint to steer Coulson in the right direction. 

Stane was manipulative, ruthless, and connected. He was also impulsive and sloppy. He had communicated with the Ten Rings for months, years even, and probably was in communication with them at this very moment. _Sloppy_, _slimy, _man he was, there would be things left behind. Receipts, shipping manifests, photos, names, maybe even locations. The perfect place to start. Of course, Stane couldn’t make it easy for her.

Stark Industries’ security was legendary. Natasha was capable of breaking into the building—she’d broken into dozens of “secure” facilities, many of them protecting secrets that were world-ending instead of simply patented. The issue was the cybersecurity. Natasha’s hacking skills were better than the average joe, better than even the average world-class computer hacker, but SI’s cybersecurity was designed and maintained by Tony himself. And Tony, ever the pain in her ass, was as skilled as he was perfectionistic. Sure, SHIELD had managed to hack JARVIS in the past. But, however casual they tried to make it appear to Tony, it took weeks and hundreds of man-hours to figure out how. She didn’t have weeks, she didn’t have men who would give their hours to her.

Of course, Natasha could give it a shot, right now. Break into SI, make her way into Stane’s office, and give hacking his system a shot. She could escape the consequences of failure, but Tony couldn’t. At this moment, he was probably in “recovery,” if you could call it that, from the removal of the shrapnel and insertion of the arc reactor. If Stane got any wind of the fact that SHIELD was onto his assassination plot, he could put aside power struggles and squabbles over money, and pay the Ten Rings as much as they wanted to put a bullet in Tony’s skull. Tony could have been wrong about them. God know not even her judgment was always the best. But the risk was too high, the potential reward too low.

There were other ways to do it. If she did things right, SHIELD would send her right in to infiltrate Stark Industries. No suspicion from HYDRA moles, Coulson, or Fury. Once she was in Stark Industries, she would have access to precisely what she needed. The rest would, hopefully, become ancient history very soon.

She couldn’t be in SHIELD’s headquarters to take the call. At 10:30, she left headquarters, wearing a causal civilian outfit with her hair tied into a messy bun. In a fit of nostalgia, Natasha went to the National Mall to wait for the call. She stood on the edge of the frozen Reflecting Pool near the Washington Monument, staring up at where the building met sky. For a moment, breathing in frigid air and staring at the cold, cloudless blue sky, she almost imagined she could hear Steve’s steps pounding toward her, and Sam’s aggravated shouting after him.

Sentiment. She was taught it never would get her anywhere. Until, of course, it did.

Her private comm buzzed twice. Clint. She picked up.

“Good?” _You alone?_

“Peachy.” _Yes, for the foreseeable future. _

“I did what you wanted.” Clint sighed.

"Did it work?" 

"Are you kidding me, Romanoff? Of course it worked."

"You don't remember Budapest?"

"Man, that didn't work because of _you._"

"See..that's not how I remember it."

Clint laughed, but tightly. He was upset. Another problem to deal with. “Nat, I gotta tell you here, I don’t get it. You’re suspicious, fine. Why can’t Fury and Coulson know about it?”

She bit her tongue on the real answer— that she trusted Fury and Coulson, but she didn’t trust everyone that they trusted. Not even she was fully aware of every single HYDRA agent that had infiltrated SHIELD. And, of course, all roads led to Pierce. “I just need to you trust me here.”

“I am trusting you, Nat. I just…” He paused, rather awkward. He’d never really been the best at outright confrontation. Clint was Hawkeye, the sniper, for a reason. “You’ve been a little…different. The last few times we talked.”

Shit. “I—it’s this, this feeling. This itch. I want to make sure I’m doing the right thing here, okay?”

“What is it with your new obsession with Stark? Why is he suddenly so special?”

“He’s not,” Natasha lied, again. “But…there are things here you don’t understand. I don’t want to drag you into it, not now.”

“I already am in it,” Clint snapped.

"Clint, I don—"

“—No, no, look, I’m not mad, I get it, this is my fucking job, Spider. Keep me in the dark for now, whatever, that's your prerogative. I just need you to tell me honestly, one thing. Is this going to put my family in danger?”

A chill ran through her bones at the thought of what would happen if Laura and the kids got hurt again. Or killed. This time, because of her. Were they in danger? Probably not. _Probably not, is not a no, though_. Was it worth it to risk Clint’s family to rescue Tony Stark, who had proven in Natasha's experience that he could rescue himself?

“No. No, they’re not.”

“I…okay, Nat. Okay.”

She stared up at the sky. Cold blue. Almost Tesseract blue. “I’ll tell you everything, but not now. We shouldn’t discuss this on the phone.”

“Oh, on the phone, I see. What’s the next best time to bring it up, then, Nat. Never? Would that work best for you?”

“Well, if you did what I said, I should be in Malibu any day now. You can interrogate me then.” 

“Deal,” Clint said, and hung up without saying goodbye.

Of course, Clint was right. She got an assignment and briefing packet from Coulson before the day was at its end. She was to infiltrate the offices of Obadiah Stane, the likely new CEO of Stark Industries, to gather intel. Report for full briefing at tomorrow 0900 hours.

She should have felt some sort of relief. Maybe victory. But instead, she stared at Stane's picture, clipped to the inside of the folder, and thought about whether this was a new timeline. What sort of new timeline was she even creating?

* * *

Evening found Natasha in a tucked away corner of the “break room” (slash broom closet), poring over the files that Coulson had given her in preparation She knew that Fury was standing behind her, but was content to pretend otherwise until he was willing to speak up. She turned a page, flexed her fingers where they gripped her pencil.

“Stane, huh,” Fury finally announced.

Natasha hummed blandly in acknowledgement, still staring at her page intently. It was one paragraph and described Stane’s coffee preferences. He wasn't a fan of sugar. Fury, apparently not impressed by her non-response, strolled up to the table, bringing with him a familiar scent of smoke, leather, and coffee. He was one of the people he missed the most, during the five years that shouldn’t have been and maybe, never were. Now, he was standing a foot away from her, but he might as well have been miles.

“Now, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you’re hiding something from me.”

“Good thing you know better.” 

“Agent Romanoff.”

She heaved a sigh, turning to look at him dead on. _Not the same. He’s not the same_. “You don’t think we can use Stane?”

“For _what_?”

“If Stark is dead, he’s the new CEO of Stark Industries. We need him for weapons, and you know it,” Natasha lied.

“Stark’s the whole brains. If he’s dead, it’s just another weapons company.”

“You want to bet SHIELD’s future armory on that assumption?

Fury clenched his jaw. “Even if you’re right, that wasn’t your call to make.”

“Coulson made the call.”

“Oh, yeah, _Coulson _is the true mastermind here.”

“You’re _insulting _your second-in-command?”

"Coulson is _not _my second-in-command, you have to stop telling people that."

Natasha felt a sudden, childish impulse to turn to him and spill absolutely everything, from the moment she’d woken up in SHIELD quarters the first time around, to the moment she jumped from a cliff to her death. She knew, better than anyone else, that he wasn’t in league with Hydra.

But she couldn’t.

Not knowing what was at stake.

Fury would have to be in the dark for now. If all went to plan, in ten years, he could know. Of course, if all went to plan, in ten years, he wouldn’t need to.

“I hope you know what you’re doing.”

She stared into his one good eye, hoping that what she saw in there was trust. “So do I.” 

* * *

Three days later, Natalie Rushman caught her plane to Malibu. She had an important job interview to get to.


End file.
